CBS News crew detained in Ukraine

5/2/14 10:53 AM EDT

A CBS News crew was detained for several hours on Friday in the volatile eastern region of Ukraine.

Appearing on "CBS This Morning," correspondent Clarissa Ward explained that she and her crew were stopped at what had become a routine checkpoint on their way to the town of Sloyvansk.

"But when they heard that we were with CBS and they deduced that they were Americans, they became irate," Ward said.

Ward and her team were then blindfolded and bound before being loaded into vans and driven for an hour and a half to another location where several other journalists were being held as well. The men and women were then separated, their belongings taken (though later returned), and one of the men on the team was beaten, Ward said.

"One man was shouting at me, 'You should tell President Obama that if he was smart he would stop supporting the fascists in Kiev.' So I think definitely they’re very emotional at the moment. I think they were pretty nervous in the face of this operation that the Ukrainian military was supposedly launching on Slovyansk," Ward said.

Eventually, commanders with "cooler heads" let them go, Ward said.

Several journalists have encountered problems in the eastern region of Ukraine, where tensions are incredibly high. Most notably, Vice News reporter Simon Ostrovsky was detained for several days last week.

UPDATE (1:50p.m.):

BuzzFeed's Mike Giglio was also among the group of journalists detained, he told Mashable on Friday.

It was scary, Giglio says, but he noted how his kidnappers kept saying they would soon return his things, which he saw as a good sign. “I don’t think Al Qaeda tells you you’re going to get your wallet back,” he says.